Society Publishing

All Newcastle University societies are entitled to host a web site at www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/ provided that they are either sponsored by a University department or are affiliated to the Students' Union.

Obtaining a Unix Username

Societies must obtain a username and associated email address. The appropriate forms are available from the IT Service Desk .

  • Department-sponsored societies must have their registration form countersigned by the head of the sponsoring department.

  • Societies affiliated to the Students' Union must have their registration form countersigned by both the IT Co-ordinator and the Sabbatical Officer

The Unix account must be renewed annually. If it is not renewed, then the username will expire and the web pages will become inaccessible. To renew your account, contact the IT Service Desk .

It takes approximately 48 hours for your Unix account to become active and may take longer at the beginning of the academic year.

Registering for the Web Service

When you register we will:

  • Create your society URL. This will be of the form http://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/name (where name can be specified by you)

  • Create a directory (folder) called public_html in your Unix file space to hold your web pages. If you already have this directory, it will remain unchanged.

  • Set the correct permissions on both your home and public_html directories.

  • Add your email address to the www-announce mailing list; this is very low-traffic (a few messages per year) and is used by the Web Services team to announce changes to and important developments in the University's Web services.

Society web space registration form.

Registration should normally take place within three working days (it is usually less) and you will receive a confirmation by email.

Uploading Files

SFTP (not FTP) should be used to upload files. When completing your connection details, the host name to use is personalpublishing.ncl.ac.uk.

Linking and Searching

If you would like your site to be listed in and linked from the directory of society sites at www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/ then you can request this by emailing webmaster@ncl.ac.uk. Your site will not be indexed by the University search engine until you do.

There are three sections on the directory page; for official Union societies, Athletic Union clubs and other clubs and societies.

Rules of Use

All content hosted on the University web servers must adhere to the guidelines and rules of use.